Blind chance

Przypadek

A compelling drama about the difficulty of reconciling political ideals with personal happiness. This unforgettable film follows Witek, a medical student with an uncertain future in Communist Poland; the movie dramatizes Witek's journey as a series of different possibilities, suggesting that chance rules our lives as much as choice. First suppressed and then censored by the Polish government.

Comment

“Every generation needs light...a belief that life can be better”. So states an elderly professor in Kieslowski’s rambling circuitous story in which coincidence, fate, and divine intervention go up against each other with no clear winner. The film is presented as a trio of short films each beginning with the same introduction; Witek, a promising young medical student, is running to catch a train. In two scenarios he misses the train, in one he does not, yet in each case there are subtle differences in the sequence of events which drastically alter Witek’s life. In one timeline he becomes a tentative Catholic whose only desire is for God to be, in another he becomes an anti-government activist, and in the third he puts his faith in neither God nor Man and instead chooses political and spiritual apathy. But the Fates, presented here in various female guises, are a fickle bunch and the film’s ultimate finale is either a scathing look at God’s “mysterious ways” or simply another example of mordant Eastern European nihilism. Questions of free will, idealism and individual choice abound in what is arguably Kieslowski’s most overtly political film; uncomfortable questions which caused the film to be held in limbo for six years by Poland’s communist censors. There is much to chew on here, but the glacial pacing and preachy dialogue had me squirming more often than not, while the unsympathetic characters kept me at arm’s length. Definitely not one of his better films.